Hello from E-3!

First, some caveats, for those of my colleagues who may be reading this but are not familiar with the blog phenomenon: This is a blog. A personal web log, an online journal, some meaningless ramblings. I am not official press, I have no formal journalistic training. This is not an article, nor is it even a weak attempt at a comprehensive review of E-3. This is just my stream of thought, and somewhat of a timesaver since every time I *do* log on, I'm getting inundated with IMs from a variety of different people who all have the same question: "How's E-3???" (grin) So, since I *do* want to answer everyone's question, but I just don't have time to talk to everyone individually, here's the Elonka's-eye-view, a quick summary of the sights and sounds and people that have streamed through my universe in the last couple days. If I don't cover a specific game that you're interested in, well, sorry, go read somebody else's blog. :) As it is, I'm worried that I'm going to write something that is going to irritate, marginalize, belittle or offend *somebody*, so I'm probably going to regret writing this anyway, but here goes . . .

First, an explanation of what E-3 is: Electronic Entertainment Expo, one of the "mecca" gatherings of the computer game industry, with tens of thousands of attendees, hundreds of different booths, and literally thousands of different things to see. It takes over multiple buildings of the main convention center in downtown Los Angeles, and can be envisioned as a loud, crowded, colorful, flashing lights and explosions and 20-story high ad banners and costumes and lasers and oh yeah, tons and tons of games, kind of event.

As for why I go to E-3. well, everyone has different reasons, but in my own case, in no particular order, I come to (a) get data about what else is going on in the gaming industry, preferably real numeric data ranging from user numbers to statistical demographics; (b) to see what the "hot new games" are, firsthand; (c) to see and be seen -- to network with my peers, to meet and encourage newcomers in the industry, and to get faces to put to the names that stream across my desktop throughout the year; and (d) to take a long deep sniff on the show floor, and grab a double nostrilful of the hype, so that I can judge for myself what's real, and what's being spun faster than a neutron star.

Next, some namedropping. I know many people in the industry, with of course many more that I don't know, but, so far, this is a partial list of those I've run across this year. The peers that I know well enough to hug, share a friendly handshake with, or wave at across the room while the turbulence of the convention pulls us in opposite directions. Some of these names are famous, some not (but should be), and some are just very cool individuals: Gordon Walton, Jessica Mulligan, Raph Koster, Rich Vogel, Jeff Valadares, John Welch, Greg Mills, Mark Jacobs, Jake Song, Richard Garriott, Greg Costikyan, Scott Miller, Brian Green, Daniel James, Larry Dunlap, Dan Scherlis, Justin Hall, Alex Jarett, Dave Rohrl, Jennifer MacLean, John Taylor, Pete Fenlon, Jason della Rocca, Curt Feldman, Eric Zimmerman, and many others who I know by sight but not by name, plus others who I'm sure I'm forgetting because my eyes are rolling back in my sockets from the sheer sensory overload that is E-3.

E-3 is only half over. So far, I've attended multiple workshops and seminars, covering such subjects as analyzing global trends in gaming (I was pleased to see representatives from both the Korean and Chinese gaming markets on panels this year), and made brief forays onto the expo floor.

Tidbits of info that have passed through my senses or thoughts:

- About 15-20% of the attendees that I've seen are women (not counting the scantily-clad booth babes on the show floor, ugh). I'm profoundly against *any* kind of human eye-candy, male or female, when they obviously know nothing about the product that they're supposed to be promoting. For example, there's one game on the show floor that I'd never heard of (Mu) which is billing itself as "the #1 MMORPG in the world," with over 350,000 simultaneous players at peak. When I asked one of the booth bimbos how that compared with what the rest of the industry recognizes as the largest MMORPG in the world, Korea's "Lineage," she gave me a confused look and said, "You know, three other people have asked me that same question today, but I don't know what Lineage is." **sigh**

Along with spending money on costumes and makeup for booth babes, would it kill a company to also make them read a simple fact sheet about the industry, so they don't come off sounding like complete idiots??

- There's lots of buzz about the wireless market (games for cellphones and PDAs)

- In order to be considered "mass market successful", a game has to sell 2-3 million copies. The Target for the new "Matrix" game is 5 million units. "Warcraft" reportedly sold 600,000 units

- Some panelists say that the average age of a gamer has been increasing, from 23 to 28. Other panelists say the average age has been dropping younger.

- I keep hearing the term "psychographic" being used in different panels, as separate from "demographic"

- I went to a special seminar-pass-only "sneak preview" of the games "Halo 2", "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King", and "Starcraft: Ghost". The LotR demo was underwhelming (after the intro reel ran, the audience sat in complete silence, with no applause). Halo 2 had technical problems so they could only show us stills of the game in our Sneak Preview (we were told that we had to go to the show floor and stand in line to see the actual demo, blech). "Starcraft: Ghost" looked extremely interesting though, with great graphics and some very inventive play techniques (swing across monkey bars to cross a chasm, then flip over and hang by your heels to take a sniper shot). I also liked the "stealth" bar so you could see how quiet you're being as you sneak around a complex. Personally, I'm not a big fan of games where you have to shoot people (I'd rather shoot monsters), but other than that it looked like a fun game from the small amount I saw.

- There's lots of discussion of "localizing" games. This makes releases more difficult, especially if there are different console platforms to consider. For example, a "Lord of the Rings" title which is being released on Xbox, GameCube, PS2, and PC, each of which types needs to have different languages on the box depending on where it's being released, has *88* different boxes that are all hitting the shelves at the same time.

- Infogrames has realized that there was more brand recognition out of the Atari trademark that they owned than their own company name, so they're marketing stuff under the "Atari" name now. Reminds me of when Spectrum Holobyte bought Microprose.

- I was very interested in listening to Colonel Casey Wardynski talk about the motivations behind the "America's Army" game. He's an economist, and noted how the Army was spending $120 million/year on mainstream advertising such as magazines and TV ads. But it's actually more cost effective to put a few million dollars into a cool game (as long as you definitely ensure that it's a *fun* game), and then give the game away for free! He said that the response has been excellent, and the "advergaming" concept has been getting attention from other branches of the government, ranging from "Rumsfeld's folks" all the way up to the White House. The Colonel really impressed me as someone who "gets it" when it comes to the power of free distribution on the internet, so I look forward to seeing what his next project(s) turn out to be.

- I didn't get much time to spend on the show floor yet. I really wanted to see a demo of "Star Wars: Galaxies", and supposedly they're only showing it behind closed doors, but I got a tip that if I really wanted to see it, it was on one of the screens in the nVidia booth, and sure enough, there it was. :)

- I'd like to go back and check out an "EyeToy" peripheral, that ties a webcam into a game so that you have to wave your arms to play something (the demo requires you to wave your arms to clean a virtual windshield).

- When a panel of 4 different people was asked to name the top 3 "critical to success" elements in designing an online game, they came up with a total of 8 different elements, and no element had more than two votes for it (for example, only two people on the panel listed "fun" as one of the elements).

- Games that are getting talked about a lot: Star Wars Galaxies, Harry Potter, Lineage, Matrix.

Okay, that's enough for one report. Now I'm off to get some sleep, and then head back into the fray again tomorrow!

Elonka :)

Elonka's MemeStream from E-3